Neonatal Care Leave and Pay: What Parents Are Entitled To
Until April 2025 a parent whose baby went into neonatal care had two bad options. Start maternity leave and watch it run down while sitting beside an incubator, or use up the whole of a two-week paternity entitlement in a hospital corridor and have nothing left for when the baby came home.
Neonatal Care Leave fixed that. It sits on top of other family leave rather than coming out of it, and it is worth up to twelve extra weeks. It is also new enough that plenty of employers have not put it in a policy yet, so it is worth knowing the shape of it. This is general information rather than advice on your own situation.
What It Gives You
You get one week of leave for every seven full, continuous days your baby spends in neonatal care, up to a maximum of 12 weeks.
Neonatal Care Pay for 2026/27 is £194.32 a week, or 90% of your average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, which is the same standard rate as maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay.
The important word is additional. Twelve weeks of neonatal leave does not reduce the mother's 52 weeks of maternity leave or the partner's two weeks of paternity leave. It is added to them.
| Days in continuous neonatal care | Weeks of leave earned |
|---|---|
| Fewer than 7 | None |
| 7 to 13 | 1 week |
| 14 to 20 | 2 weeks |
| 28 to 34 | 4 weeks |
| 56 to 62 | 8 weeks |
| 84 or more | 12 weeks, the maximum |
Twelve weeks at the standard rate is £2,331.84 gross, on top of whatever other statutory pay you are receiving. For a family already dealing with a hospital stay, that is not a small amount.
Which babies it covers
The care has to start within the first 28 days of the baby's life, and it has to be continuous for at least seven full days. It covers medical or palliative care in a hospital setting, or care arranged by a hospital after discharge in some circumstances.
The seven-day requirement means very short admissions do not qualify, and the days have to be continuous rather than added together across separate stays. Where a baby is discharged and readmitted, ask your employer how they are counting it, because the position depends on the detail.
Both parents can claim. This is not a single entitlement to be split. The mother and the partner each have their own right to neonatal care leave, calculated on the same days in care, so a four-week admission can produce four extra weeks for each of them.
The leave and the pay, again, have different conditions
Same structure as paternity leave, and the same trap.
The leave is a day one right. No qualifying period of service is required. You can start a job and take neonatal care leave in your first month.
The pay has conditions. For Statutory Neonatal Care Pay you need at least 26 weeks of continuous employment by the relevant qualifying week, and average weekly earnings of at least the Lower Earnings Limit, which is £129 a week for 2026/27.
Note that some GOV.UK pages still quote £125, the 2025/26 figure, because not every page updates on the same schedule. The employer rates and thresholds guidance for 2026 to 2027 gives £129.
When you can take it
The rules distinguish between taking the leave while the baby is still in care or shortly afterwards, and taking it later in the first year. The notice requirements are lighter in the first situation, deliberately, because nobody should be filling in forms to a deadline while their baby is in intensive care.
In practical terms, tell your employer as soon as you reasonably can, in writing where possible, and confirm the detail afterwards. Employers are not expecting a properly formatted notice period from a parent in a neonatal unit, and the framework does not require one.
Where the leave falls after other family leave has ended, ordinary notice expectations apply, so give as much warning as you can.
How it fits around other leave
For the mother, maternity leave usually starts automatically at the birth, and neonatal care leave normally follows on at the end of it. So the pattern is 52 weeks of maternity leave, then up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave after it, rather than the neonatal weeks being carved out of the 52.
For a partner, the two weeks of paternity leave and the neonatal care leave are separate entitlements. Since paternity leave can now be split and taken any time in the first year, there is real value in thinking about the order: using neonatal care leave for the hospital period keeps the paternity weeks available for when the baby comes home.
Shared Parental Leave, adoption leave and unpaid parental leave all continue to exist alongside it. Our article on paternity leave and pay covers how the partner's entitlements now stack up.
Do not spend your paternity leave first by default. This is the mistake the new entitlement was designed to prevent, and it still happens, because employers who have not updated their policies simply put people on paternity leave. If your baby is in neonatal care, ask about neonatal care leave explicitly, by name.
Your rights during the leave
Neonatal care leave works like other statutory family leave. You stay employed throughout, your annual leave continues to accrue, your contractual terms and benefits continue apart from pay, and you are entitled to return to your job.
Tax and National Insurance are deducted from the pay in the normal way. It is treated as earnings, like other statutory family payments.
If your employer has never heard of it
Entirely possible, and not necessarily obstruction. The entitlement came in on 6 April 2025 and a lot of staff handbooks predate it, particularly in smaller organisations.
Point them at the GOV.UK guidance on neonatal care leave and pay. HR teams generally act quickly once they know a statutory right exists, because getting it wrong is a liability for them.
If they refuse the pay, ask for the reasons in writing. HMRC's Statutory Payment Disputes Team can make a decision on entitlement to a statutory payment, free of charge, and that is the route if a refusal looks wrong.
Practical advice from the ward
A few things that make the administrative side less painful at a time when you have no capacity for it.
- Write down the admission date and the discharge date. Everything turns on the number of continuous days, and hospital records are retrievable but slow.
- Tell your employer early and in writing, even if it is a two-line email. It starts the clock and it stops you being defaulted onto the wrong kind of leave.
- Ask what the employer's own scheme offers. Some enhance neonatal pay in the same way they enhance maternity pay, and you will not be told unless you ask.
- Keep the paternity weeks in reserve where you can.
- Charities in this area, including Bliss, provide practical support and know the entitlements well. They are worth contacting.
The whole point of this entitlement is that a family should not be paying for a medical emergency out of leave meant for being at home with a new baby. Claiming it properly is what makes that true in practice.